Mumbai airport breaks its previous record by handling 980 flights in 24 hours

Mumbai airport has another reason to be proud. On January 20, the busiest single-runway airport in the world handled 980 arrivals and landings in a day, thereby, breaking its own record. Prior to this, on December 6, the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport aka Mumbai airport had given ground to 974 flights.

Despite the astounding record, it is UK’s Gatwick airport rather than Mumbai airport that remains the most productive single-runway airport in the world. As per the data gathered from the UK’s Airport Coordination Ltd, Gatwick airport alone handled 870 flights every day in the summer of 2017. However, while the Mumbai airport is operational 24 hours a day, Gatwick airport is active only 19 hours (5 am to midnight) due to restrictions put on flight movements at night since 1971.

"The most important difference between Gatwick and Mumbai is the environment the two airports are set in," said a senior air traffic controller from Mumbai.

"Mumbai airport functions in a space-starved, infrastructure-constrained environment, unlike any other. More flights can't be added onto Mumbai's single runway without a holistic approach that takes into account the ground realities, India's regulatory framework, human factors etc," he shared.

There is a vast difference between the Mumbai and Gatwick airport. London’s air passenger traffic is dealt by the Heathrow airport, the Gatwick airport, Stansted and Luton. There are 2 operational runways that serve Heathrow simultaneously, while the remaining three airports have one each. Whereas, Mumbai city has only one airport as the Juhu airport is still not ready to control airlines.

The runway framework usable for Mumbai-bound airlines is a set of cross runways - a main runway and a smaller collateral runway. However, only one of the two runways is functional at a time.

"If the main runway has to be shut because of an emergency, airport operations are crippled,'' said the senior air traffic controller. He also revealed, "Last September, when a Spice Jet aircraft overshot the main runway forcing its closure, most of the wide-bodied aircraft operating long haul international flights were forced to divert to Hyderabad and Bangalore, where a dearth of aircraft parking bays posed a problem.”

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Mumbai airport breaks its previous record by handling 980 flights in 24 hours

Mumbai airport has another reason to be proud. On January 20, the busiest single-runway airport in the world handled 980 arrivals and landings in a day, thereby, breaking its own record.